Constructing a fantasy to escape reality is no game - unless that game is Oscar by Team Sharkeye. In Oscar, players take on the role of a young girl - Oscar - who explores a bright and colorful dream world with her stuffed elephant, Flynn, held tight in her arms. As Oscar's journey progresses, the hint of a real world pain creeps into her fantasy. Oscar, in other words, is a game about how we use created worlds - not unlike those we experience by playing video games - to escape real-life pain.

Of course, before it can teach us how to deal with our problems, Oscar has its own obstacles to overcome - specifically, the fact that it needs $40,000 on Kickstarter to be funded. It also appears that lead designer Josh Long hasn't chosen a release window: "As with any project it can be hard to pinpoint a release date," Long wrote on the game's Kickstarter page, "but shipping something imperfect is something you come to accept as an experienced developer; I treat Oscar as the beginning of a career-long pursuit of games that convey mature human experiences. The game is intensely personal but at a certain point you learn more from shipping a title and applying what you learned on the next one."

Oscar is planned to release on PC, Mac and Linux. The game will be available on tablet devices as well - iOS "for sure," while Android support is "up in the air." [Image: Team Sharkeye]